Machine-type-communication (MTC) devices are projected to be 50 billion in number over the next decade. These classes of devices may have different requirements from a typical device in a Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) system in terms of optional feature support, traffic characteristic support, access priority, congestion management, ratio of signaling to user plane traffic, etc. Many MTC devices and/or applications generate very low user plane traffic on the network and many such MTC devices and/or applications can be considered as low access priority. Low access priority for MTC device and/or application was defined in 3GPP Release 10 technical specifications. Given such large number of devices, even if they use low priority access and send only small amount of data, they have the potential to overload the network, for example the radio access network and/or core network. Operators are concerned with how to efficiently maintain connection of large number of such devices without impacting normal user equipment (UE) or a Human-to-Human communication system and overall system performance. As a cost effective mechanism to support the different classes of applications and/or services and devices and/or users as well, operators are thus considering to deploy separate dedicated core networks for independent scaling of specific feature provisioning for specific user or traffic types and isolating specific users and traffic from each other due to the fact that existing specifications for MTC devices are not able to handle UEs that do not provide low access priority indication and do not support reselection of MME.
A Release 13 work item has been recently approved to enable the deployment of such dedicated core networks where each dedicated core network is dedicated to UEs sharing the same characteristics. Such dedicated core network may be considered as an overlay network that builds on existing network but allows a more efficient handling of specific UEs and traffic types. Creation of such dedicated network nodes becomes easy with technologies such as Software Defined Networking/Network Functions Virtualization (SDN/NFV) in the future, for example instantiation of dedicated MME node as virtual network function.
The new Release 13 work item covers the core network (CN) and currently does not cover radio access network (RAN) aspects, however in order to support the new layered network structures efficiently in future 3GPP releases, RAN aspects also may be considered. Therefore, this invention proposes methods to establish and control communication of dedicated devices with dedicated nodes, for example an enhanced Node B (eNB) in RAN, a mobility management entity (MME), a serving gateway (S-GW) and a packet gateway (P-GW) in the core network. These dedicated nodes may be understood, but not necessarily restricted to, as MTC nodes or low cost and/or low complexity nodes or nodes specialized to particular usage such as small data, health, security, and so on, which may reduce operators capital expenditure (CAPEX) while rolling out new MTC and/or Internet of Things (IoT) type of services. The same concepts also may apply for dedicated devices that can be understood, but not necessarily restricted to, as MTC/IoT or low complexity and/or low cost devices. The dedicated network targets to create more optimized networks in the RAN and/or CN for the new requirements to better support IoT type of services; examples of these types of networks and services are always-on connectivity, small data, frequent data transfer, high priority access, health secure network, video surveillance network, and so on.
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